The book provides insights on the regional integration experiences in developing countries, their potential for development and the role of competition law and policy in the process. Moreover, the book emphasizes the development dimension both of regional competition policies and of competition law. Although it holds many promises for developing countries, some challenges must be overcome for the process of creating a regional market and applying a competition law, to be successful. This timely book delivers concrete proposals that will help to unleash the potential of regional integration and regional competition policies, and help developing countries fully enjoy the benefits deriving from a regional market.

Chapter 1: The Harmonization of ASEAN: Competition Laws and Policy from an Economic Integration Perspective

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Lawan Thanadsillapakul 1. INTRODUCTION The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)1 is an economic group comprised of the countries of Southeast Asia.2 The Asia Paciﬁc 1 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established in Bangkok on 8 August 1967 by the ﬁve original member countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined on 8 January 1984, Vietnam on 28 July 1995, Laos and Myanmar on 23 July 1997 and Cambodia on 30 April 1999. The ASEAN region has a population of about 500 million, a total area of 4.5 million square kilometres, a combined gross domestic product of US$ 737 billion and a total trade volume of US$ 720 billion. Recently, ASEAN launched several new economic co-operation schemes: the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the ASEAN Framework Agreement for Liberalisation on Trade in Services (AFAS), the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA) and the ASEAN Industrial Co-operation Scheme (AICO) for implementing open regionalism aimed at enhancing economic integration and creating an open regional economic group. See Thanadsillapakul, L. (2000), ‘Open Regionalism and Deeper Integration: the Implementation of AFTA, AIA, and AFAS’, available at: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/ cepmlp/journal/html/vol6/vol6–16.html (the CEPMLP Internet Journal). 2 The new approach to ASEAN economic integration based on ‘open regionalism’, which balances intra and extra-regional liberalization of trade and investment and is aimed at creating a natural, de facto, integrated regional market, was launched by ASEAN in its new integration schemes: AIA, AFAS and (new) AFTA. This model (new paradigm) is legally...

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